Volkswagen’s emissions issue, where its diesel engines were programmed to get around test standards, has left some critics wondering if the German automaker will make it through this breach of public trust. If history is any indication, it will. Here are some serious scandals that other automakers went through and still survived.

Honda Clean Air Act Violations

Volkswagen is hardly the first to try to bend the environmental rules. In 1998, Honda’s U.S. branch paid a $267 million settlement for violations of the Clean Air Act. At the time, including the civil penalties, it was the largest-ever judgement under the Act. The issue involved 1.6 million vehicles, including the 1995 Civic, and 1996 and 1997 Accord, Civic, Prelude and Odyssey, along with Acura models.

Honda Clean Air Act Violations

The issue involved the on-board diagnostic system, or OBD, which monitors emissions during driving. If the engine misfires, more hydrocarbons will be expelled in the exhaust and catalytic converter damage could occur. The suit alleged that Honda disabled the monitoring device so that if engine misfire did happen, the driver wouldn’t get a warning. In addition to the penalties, American Honda also had to extend the vehicles’ emissions warranty and provide free tune-ups.

Ford Pinto Fires

Introduced in 1971, the Pinto spawned one of the most infamous auto scandals in history, prone to catching fire when hit from behind. The problem was traced to the gas tank, which could rupture in a crash. The Pinto had been designed quickly and to a low price, and it simply didn’t have enough rear-end protection.

Ford Pinto Fires

Journalists investigating the story uncovered the issue. Ford knew a five-dollar fix would have solved the problem, but it would have put it over the car’s target price. Worse, Ford had done a cost-benefit analysis of the fix’s price versus the lower expected cost of crash-related injury and death lawsuits. An Indiana prosecutor filed charges when three women were killed in a fire, making Ford the first U.S. corporation to be indicted for criminal homicide. The charges were dismissed when Ford successfully argued that the driver who hit the Pinto was to blame.

Perhaps this sounds familiar: the companies were accused of installing devices that allowed the engines to meet federal emissions standards when they were being tested, but which disabled the emissions control systems when they were driving on the highway. The companies were also required to recall and rebuild affected engines, conduct new emissions testing, and introduce new and cleaner engines.

Audi 5000

Audi was still a minor player in the U.S. market when, in 1986, complaints of unintended acceleration started to surface over its new 5000 sedan. An Ohio woman sued the automaker, claiming that the car surged forward, striking and killing her six-year-old son. Audi suggested drivers were mistaking the throttle for the brake. The CBS television show 60 Minutes picked up on the case and showed a 5000 lurching ahead by itself.

Audi 5000

It was later discovered that someone connected with the show tampered with the car to make it drive ahead. Audi won the initial case but lost other suits that claimed the throttle was too high in relation to the brake. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) never definitively ruled on whether it was a defect or driver error, but it pressed Audi to issue recalls to adjust the pedals. Sales dropped so low that it’s believed Audi considered leaving the market, and didn’t come close to its pre-scandal sales levels until 1999.

Toyota Unintended Acceleration

In August 2009, a 911 operator received a frantic call from someone in a Lexus who said the car was accelerating uncontrollably. The car crashed and its four occupants were killed. It was later determined that a dealer-installed floor mat had jammed against the throttle. Two years earlier, NHTSA had opened an investigation into the mat design. Toyota had also launched a probe and then a recall of the all-weather mats, along with an internal investigation of throttle pedals that could stick in place when depressed.

Toyota Unintended Acceleration

The issue actually went back to the redesigned 2002 Camry. After customers complained about engine surging when the brakes were applied, Toyota issued a service bulletin for technicians to revise the engine control module. In response to consumer complaints, NHTSA opened an investigation in 2004, but closed it when it could not identify an issue. Following the 2009 crash, NHTSA and Toyota told drivers to remove their vehicles’ floor mats.

Toyota Unintended Acceleration

Ultimately, Toyota recalled 9.3 million vehicles worldwide to modify the accelerator pedal or address the floor mat issue, and added a system on new vehicles that cut power to the engine if the driver hit both the throttle and the brake. In 2014, the U.S. government fined Toyota $1.2 billion, saying the company knew years before that it had a problem but did not disclose it.

GM Ignition Switches

GM’s woes over ignition switches that could shut off the engine while driving or prevent the airbags from deploying dated back to 2001, when engineers discovered the problem as they readied the Saturn Ion for production. It cropped up again as the 2004 Chevrolet Cobalt neared its launch, but the company determined it would take too much time and money to fix. Instead, it issued a bulletin stating that customers shouldn’t use heavy key chains. A driver was killed in July 2005 when her Cobalt shut down and crashed into a tree, but a formal investigation wasn’t opened. GM issued a service bulletin but not a recall.

GM Ignition Switches

NHTSA employees twice petitioned that agency’s Office of Defects Investigation, but both times, that department would not make a correlation between the switches and airbag deployment. Following GM’s bankruptcy and bailout, a Cobalt engineer stated that it was a “business decision” not to fix the switch. In December 2013, GM determined that 31 crashes and 13 deaths could be attributed to the faulty switches. It notified the NHTSA in February 2014 and began issuing recalls.

GM Ignition Switches

Ultimately, 2.6 million cars were recalled for the faulty switches. The automaker was required to testify before the U.S. government, and incoming GM chief Mary Barra fired 15 employees connected with the issue. Civil and criminal payments and settlements were levied against the automaker, including some by the NHTSA for delaying reporting the defect, for an estimated $2 billion. GM is still embroiled in private lawsuits over crashes and resulting occupant injuries and deaths.

Pricey Parts

Following years of investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice fined Japanese companies Kayaba Industry, which makes suspension parts, and Sumitomo Electric Industries for price-fixing on parts they sold to Japanese automaker and motorcycle subsidiaries in North America. The Department alleged that the companies and their co-conspirators inflated the costs of parts they sold to Honda, Kawasaki, Nissan, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota from the 1990s until 2012. They were just the tip of the iceberg: the U.S. government has levied $2.6 billion in fines to 37 parts suppliers and 55 Japanese executives in the last few years, affecting more than 25 million vehicles. The companies, including Kayaba and Sumitomo, are still in business, while some executives escaped U.S. persecution by returning to Japan.

Volvo’s Monster Advertising

In 1990, Volvo gained considerable attention with a television ad. A monster truck ran over a row of cars, crushing all of them but a Volvo that remained relatively intact to illustrate the car’s safety strength. The ad was popular, but Texas state attorney Jim Mattox thought it was too good to be true and opened an investigation.

Volvo’s Monster Advertising

Volvo’s advertising agency admitted that the monster truck initially crushed all the cars equally, so it reinforced the roof of a second Volvo with lumber. That didn’t do it either, so a third car had steel beams added and the pillars on the other cars weakened to finally get the shot. Volvo pulled the ad and apologized for it, and fired its ad agency of 24 years. The automaker also had to pay $316,250 to cover the costs of the investigation, and it and the ad agency were each fined $150,000.

Hyundai and Kia Overestimate Efficiency

After a two-year investigation by the U.S. government, Hyundai and Kia agreed to pay a combined $350 million in 2014 to settle accusations that it had claimed higher fuel efficiency and lower emissions on several models than the vehicles actually produced. The payment included fines and the equivalent cash value of greenhouse gas emission credits that the companies had to forfeit. The ratings came to light when the Environmental Protection Agency found a discrepancy between its tests and what the companies had submitted from their joint Korean testing facility.

Hyundai and Kia Overestimate Efficiency

The U.S. government said the companies had “cherry-picked” data, using optimum temperatures and wrong-sized tires; Hyundai said the guidelines allowed for “broad latitude” in test tires, road surfaces and temperature. Following the investigation, the automaker formed an independent test group to monitor testing and reporting. In Canada, the two companies adjusted their ratings and issued prepaid gas cards to affected owners as reimbursement for fuel.

GM Fuel Tanks

Chevrolet’s 1973 to 1987 pickup trucks gained the NHTSA’s attention when several of them were involved in fiery crashes. It discovered that the automaker wanted the truck to carry a 40-gallon (151-litre) fuel tank, but it wouldn’t fit. Instead, it mounted two 20-gallon tanks on either side, outside of the frame, which made them vulnerable in a side-impact crash. The NHTSA wanted GM to issue a voluntary recall, but the automaker refused.

GM Fuel Tanks

It was discovered that GM had assessed the problem and determined it wasn’t cost-effective to spend more than $2.20 per truck, and instead had paid out $495 million settling lawsuits over occupant deaths. The U.S. Justice Department intervened, resulting in NHTSA closing the case if GM contributed $51 million into federal safety programs. In 1992, NBC’s Dateline ran a segment showing trucks catching fire after being hit, but it turned out the producers had set a charge to make them explode. GM successfully sued and suspended its television advertising, while the president of NBC resigned.

Ford and Firestone

In 2000, NHTSA opened an investigation into reports of Firestone tires coming apart, with fatal rollover crashes involving the Ford Explorers upon which they were factory equipment. Firestone subsequently issued a recall of 6.5 million tires. It was the second-largest tire recall in U.S. history, but unfortunately, Firestone also held the record for the first, when it took back 14.5 million tires in 1978, also for tread separation. Ford then separately recalled another 13 million tires.

Ford and Firestone

It appeared the tires were most likely to separate in areas that experienced hot weather. Then internal documents came to light. The Explorer had rolled in testing, so Ford had stiffened the springs and lowered the recommended tire pressure. That increased fuel consumption, so Firestone was tasked with making a lighter tire to compensate. These lighter, lower-pressure tires, combined with hot weather, were causing the problem.

Ford and Firestone

Firestone blamed Ford for the tire design and pressure, while Ford said that competitors’ tires on other automakers’ SUVs weren’t coming apart. The issue ended the 95-year supply relationship between the two and cost more than $2.1 billion for the recalls alone, before lost revenue and lawsuits. The recalls weakened Firestone so much that it agreed to a takeover by Bridgestone. The problem also led the U.S. government to make tire pressure monitoring systems mandatory on new vehicles in that country (most cars sold in Canada have them, but they’re not required by law here).

Back to Volkswagen

How the Volkswagen issue came to light is a story unto itself and involves two men with the “we-couldn’t-make-this-up-if-we-tried” names of Peter Mock and John German. Mock, who headed a clean-air group in Europe, knew that American diesel emissions standards were higher. He contacted German (the man), his counterpart in the U.S., with the idea that he could show Europeans that German (the country) automakers could meet even tougher clean-diesel standards.

Volkswagen Diesels

German wasn’t looking for a scandal. He thought he was proving it could be done, using portable equipment that checked emissions while he was driving. A BMW tested matched its published figures, but two Volkswagens exceeded theirs by 5 to 35 times the standard. German reported it to the Environmental Protection Agency and the chase was on. Will Volkswagen survive this? It won’t be easy, but if automaker scandal history is any indication, it should come out just fine.